First, we’re skinny-dipping,
Sam & I, in a pond in Tennessee,
which is his idea, I should say,
& the tree with the rope swing
looms darker
than the dark night sky.
Second, the harvest moon,
which we came here to see,
is nowhere to be found,
instead the sky burning with stars
I can’t see without my glasses
that Sam describes for me.
Third, I’ve made no promises
to monogamy, but am not sure
about those who have.
I spent my twenties riding
trains through cities leaving
behind hotel rooms
of men who may
or may not have been—
I never asked. The world of men
who have sex with men
is a chrysalis, a paper lantern
the hornets fill
with sound. Underwater, our feet
keep touching. Sorry, Sam says,
sorry, sorry, sorry.
I imagine his wife after
a bath, wrapping her hair
in a towel. I imagine
the cluster of small towns
I come from,
each with its own abandoned factory
with its own broken windows—
The world of men
who have sex with men
keeps to itself as the rock
hurled through the last
intact glass. Shit happens,
you know? Sam says
about fidelity as we stroke
from one shore
to the next. What we don’t do
doesn’t matter. He towels off,
the moon peers over
the ridge, silvers the pond
at its skirts & the bed
beneath me, which is dark
& crowded with dead leaves.
♦